Minus for iPhone/iPad 2.0

Minus is an excellent online storage service which gives you a very useful 10GB of server space, then allows you to upload files with drag-and-drop simplicity.

The process starts by creating an account at Minus.com. Don't worry, there are no lengthy forms to complete, in fact you don't even have to give the company your email address. At a minimum, just providing them with a user name and password is enough to get started.

Once this is done, install the Minus client and you can transfer files to the site immediately, just by dragging and dropping them onto its system tray icon. (Clients are available for Windows, the Mac, Linux, Android and iPhone, with Windows Phone

You can then download any of these files later, from this computer, or any of your others, just by logging in, selecting the files you need and clicking the Download link.

The system also creates a "shortlink" for each file. If you want to share one of them with a friend or colleague, just email them that link; they'll be able to download that file right away, but won't have access to anything else in your account.

Alternatively, you can make a folder entirely public, which means anyone will be able to search for and download its contents. This is perfect if, say, you've some large files you'd like to share with the world (the services supports up to 2GB files), but are worried about the bandwidth that will require, because Minus doesn't impose any limits on the number of downloads.

The company won't delete your files, either (as long as they don't break the rules, anyway: you can't share copyrighted material, for instance). Whether your files get 1 download a second, or a year, they'll remain on the server until you choose to delete them.

And useful extras include a screen capture tool. Press your chosen hotkey, capture either the full screen or a specified rectangular area, and the Minus client will automatically grab an image and upload it to your account, ready for sharing later.

Please note, as we write there's no option to purchase extra server space, so 10GB is your maximum per account. The company says there will be options to add more free space soon, though, so if you can live with 10GB for the moment then we'd say give it a try.

Note that this version you can access from your iPhone.

Verdict

If you find the usual 1 or 2GB of free online backup space offered by other services isn't enough, then you'll like Minus. 10GB for free is much more generous, and the client is easy to use, if a little RAM-hungry (it required more than 60MB on our test PC).